With big blinking eyes and a small white body on three wheels, Astro is tossing around with a camera, microphones and sensors in your house. At knee height, but with a periscope that reaches eye level, the robot can get a good overview in your house.
The robot’s personality has been developed with inspiration from film and feedback from hundreds of testers, writes Amazon on its websites. The strategy is clear, the robot looks both cute and innocent, a quite different approach than Tesla has in its robot development.
– Astro’s personality facilitates communication, provides wonderful experiences and evokes emotions such as empathy in users. During testing, we were humbled to see how many people told us that Astro’s personality made it feel like part of the family, and that they would miss Astro when it disappeared, writes Amazon.
Guard robot and nursing assistant
It was at a product launch Tuesday night that Amazon launched the robot along with a number of other products.
Astro robots, which is currently only available in the states, is now sold for $ 999 to invited users. But Amazon has already announced that the price will rise to 1499 dollars when it becomes available in the store.
Astro has built-in Alexa and can drive around your house and hang near you. When you are not at home, you can connect to the robot and send it around the house to check on your pet or grandmother. When you are at home, the robot can follow you to give you a message or reminder, convey a video call, or deliver the coffee cup you left in the Astros cup holder.
The robot is full of cameras and sensors, and charges like a robot vacuum cleanerIllustration: Amazon
Astro will also function as an alarm system, and will tell if there are strangers in the house. For an additional fee, Astro can patrol and take surveillance video of your home.
The robot charges in the same way as a robot vacuum cleaner, but instead of cleaning, it sucks up huge amounts of data in your house.
–
A privacy nightmare?
The robot should recognize those who belong in the house, so if you are visiting a family with an Astro, you must expect to be pursued and examined further. The robot is designed to know the faces of those who belong in the house, and initiates a security protocol when strangers are present.
Leaked documents show according to the Motherboard that the robot leans heavily on face recognition and user behavior to solve its safety tasks. It has the potential to monitor everything that is going on in your home.
Not everyone wants to let Amazon into the bedroom, and privacy experts have already expressed skepticism. It is expected that the robot will lead to privacy debate.
He is skeptical of the robot, and probably would not let it into his own home.
– If someone has always wanted an Ipad on wheels that can roll around in your house, then they will probably find the product interesting. But I think consumers have become more aware of the privacy risk than they were a few years ago, Guraglia told Financial Times.
It should be possible to turn off microphones, cameras and movement in the app, and limit which rooms Astro is allowed to enter.
Still working poorly
Another question that may provoke debate is whether Astro is really so much more than Alexa on wheels.
Motherboard has spoken to several sources who have been involved in the development, and who talk about very limited functionality.
– Astro is terrible and will most likely throw itself down the stairs as soon as it gets the opportunity, an anonymous developer who contributed in an earlier phase is said to have told Motherboard.
He describes the robot as fragile, it destroys itself when it gets stuck, it is difficult to get replaced if it happens, and the cost is absurd, he is said to have said.
